Creamline’s flawless ball distribution was on full display in the Game One of the 2022 Premier Volleyball League Open Conference.
Jia De Guzman dished out 39 excellent sets. She steered the balanced offensive attack which featured 26-point outputs from both Tots Carlos and Alyssa Valdez.
Jema Galanza and Jeanette Panaga also scored in double digits, finishing with 17 points and 13 points, respectively. Meanwhile, Celine Domingo had seven.
But despite the offensive masterpiece, De Guzman believes that she could still take it up a notch come Game Two on Friday.
“Kyle [Negrito] and I kasi as setters of Creamline, we know how deep our lineup is in terms of spikers. So yung pag-distribute, I guess today… Honestly in my opinion, we could do better pa,” bared De Guzman, who also chipped in four points in the win.
“We could do better in the next game and that’s something na paghahandaan namin tomorrow in the training.”
Creamline survived a tight encounter against Petro Gazz in the fourth set to close up the finals opener, 25-16, 23-25, 25-12, 32-30, at the Mall of Asia Arena.
“I guess pressure-wise, it shouldn’t be on us. So we’ll just take it as another game against Petro Gazz,” said the six-time PVL Best Setter.
The Cool Smashers and the Angels will head to the Ynares Center in Antipolo for Game Two of the PVL finals.
Creamline had a Game Three loss to Petro Gazz in the finals of the Reinforced Conference at the very same arena back in 2019. Still, De Guzman bared that the team has already learned their lesson from that experience.
She also hopes that the team can bring out their A-game on Friday to finally close out the Angels in Ynares.
“We’ll do our homework again, we’ll go our training tomorrow. We’ll do our best to recover before the game on Friday,” the 26-year-old Ateneo product stressed. “Kasi malayo rin yung laro eh, and it’s an arena na we had a not so good experience before.
“But that’s an experience we learned from. And, hopefully, malabas namin yung best namin for Friday’s game namin.”
